Gordon Still Turns Boos Into Boohoos

Commentary

Despite The Loss Of Ray Evernham And Five Rainbow Warriors, Jeff Gordon Remains A Force. Commentary

February 14, 2000|By Ed Hinton of The Sentinel Staff

DAYTONA BEACH - Feel any better after a night's sleep, Jeff Gordon haters? No? The two aspirin and the fifth of Jack Daniel's didn't help?

Poor boo-birds. He just keeps sticking it in your face, doesn't he?

If you take any satisfaction that Dale Jarrett edged Gordon by the luck of the draft in Sunday's Bud Shootout, you really need counseling. Yours is the worst form of denial.

Deep inside, you know how brilliantly Gordon drove - again. Stop repressing. Hear Jarrett: ``He had no help at all, and I had a lot of help [a drafting push from Bobby Labonte).''

I only can imagine your suffering. Maybe if you'd made it half-gallon of Jack Daniel's ...

Here you were so hopeful at the outset of Daytona 500 week. The new Chevrolet Monte Carlos, including Gordon's, were supposed to be out to lunch vis a vis Ford Tauruses this time. And crew chief Ray Evernham and five of the Rainbow Warriors crewmen are gone, so your hearts were light with hope that the 24 team would disintegrate.

And then you woke up - to the best last lap of racing I've seen on Daytona International Speedway in exactly 21 years. Courtesy of Jeff Gordon.

Sterling Marlin concurred: ``We looked like Cale and Donnie in '79,'' he said of Gordon and himself.

And that's precisely the benchmark lap I mean. In a deja vu scenario, Gordon and Marlin didn't crash - so they drove better than Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison did on the white-flag lap of the 1979 Daytona 500.

Since restrictor plates were instituted at Daytona in 1988, conventional wisdom has held that the last-lap slingshot pass was dead - that the guy in front at the white flag would remain in front at the checkered flag.

Sunday, when not even one lead change was supposed to happen on the last lap, there were two. With two laps to go in the Shootout, Gordon was fourth. Marlin led, with the Robert Yates Tauruses of Ricky Rudd and Jarrett - supposedly the two invincible cars of this Speedweeks - second and third.

Then, when Rudd pulled out of the draft, trying to pass Marlin, Gordon began yet another illustration of why he's the best there is. He tucked in behind Jarrett and got a push from behind from Ken Schrader. The shuffle put Jarrett and Rudd side by side, and at the white flag, Gordon shot to the bottom of the track, passed them both and moved in behind Marlin.

Marlin is as good as they come at holding off a second-place car on the last lap at Daytona. But down the back stretch, ``I just couldn't hold him down,'' Marlin said.

And here came the improved rendition of Cale and Donnie '79. All by himself - which had been deemed virtually impossible in the restrictor plate era - Gordon (playing Cale) simply drove inside Marlin (playing Donnie). When Marlin ``tried to pinch him down,'' as Marlin admitted, Gordon kept coming and took the lead.

But their side-by-side encounter had bogged them both down momentarily and allowed Jarrett to close on them. Gordon was without a drafting partner after he cleared Marlin. So when Jarrett roared up on the outside with a big push from Labonte, the laws of physics sent Jarrett to the front at the finish.

Finishing second made Gordon's drive no less spectacular.

Gordon's performance was enough to relieve the minds of NASCAR officials, who'd been listening to widespread complaining by Chevrolet teams that the 2000 Monte Carlo needed a rules change to be the aerodynamic equal of the 2000 Taurus. As of Sunday evening, officials had seen nothing to convince them to reduce rear spoiler size or angle to make the racing closer.

Gordon had equalized the competition with talent, not whining - he had not participated in the Chevrolet grousing.

``It's a good idea,'' he said of spoiler reduction [mustn't break the party line, of course), ``but whatever they give me, I'm going to make the best of it. I'm going to try to win the race with what I've got.''

So, poor boo-birds, you no longer even can call Gordon a whiner.

And what about that pit stop? Clockwork, wasn't it? So much for your hopes that the new over-the-wall guys would blow it in the pits.

Chassis setup? The only minor flaw in Gordon's car, a slight ``push,'' or understeer, near the end of the race, is a minor epidemic among all the Monte Carlos - indeed, a push in Marlin's Chevy was what caused him to bump Labonte into Rudd and send Rudd crashing and rolling at the finish - that will be worked out by race day.

So all in all, new crew chief Robbie Loomis did as meticulous a job with Gordon's chassis setup on Sunday as Evernham had in the past.

For seven years, boo-birds, you said Gordon won because of Evernham. And because of the Rainbow Warriors. They're gone now.

So learn to live with the reason Jeff Gordon is the biggest winner of his time in NASCAR - and well on his way to being the biggest winner ever.